To close out March 2025, the former police chief of a southern Illinois town called Wayne City pled guilty to two motorcycle-related charges in federal court. But they may not be what you expect.
The defendant, Anson Fenton, was Wayne City’s police chief in 2022 and 2023. According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois, he was charged with two separate counts. The first was a count of “misapplication of property from federally funded programs,” while the second was “interstate transportation of stolen property.”
But although that tells you what the charges were, that doesn’t tell you what he pleaded guilty to actually doing. That’s what the court documents in this case are for!
Dive in there, and you’ll learn that Fenton was Wayne City’s police chief in 2022 and 2023, and that part of his duties included “safeguarding property that Wayne City received from asset forfeiture proceedings.” We aren’t going to go deep into the problematic aspects of asset forfeiture that investigative journalists have been digging up for years here, but you’re about to see two counts of them spelled out in this case.
The Stipulation of Facts goes on to note that individuals charged with crimes in Wayne City were sometimes subject to asset forfeiture proceedings, and that defendants in applicable cases sometimes agreed to relinquish both their titles and their ownership claims as part of these processes.
From there, once Wayne City took possession of the forfeited property, it was supposed to hold on to it until the Wayne City Board of Trustees officially authorized them to sell it; and crucially, not before. Furthermore, Wayne City also received over $10,000 in federal funds during this time—and that timing is presumably why this is a federal case.
The first count that Fenton pleaded guilty to involved his selling two forfeited motorcycles: a 2017 Harley-Davidson Street Glide Special and a forfeited 2000 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy. The charge states that the money from the sale of these two motorcycles was used “for his own personal use,” and without authorization from the Wayne City Board of Trustees.
The second count involves a 2022 Suzuki Hayabusa that Fenton didn’t just sell, but actually rode across state lines, all the way to Alexandria, Virginia. It wasn’t a joy ride, nor a simple exchange of motorcycle for cash in this case. No; instead, it was a vehicle trade, where Fenton traded the ‘Busa in question for a 1991 Ford Mustang which he then kept for himself.
In a statement regarding the guilty plea, US Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft said, “The U.S. Attorney’s Office strongly supports our police, but we must take decisive action when things like this happen. By taking unauthorized possession of forfeited property for his personal benefit, the defendant used his position of trust as police chief to deceive the community he was sworn to protect.”
While Fenton has now pleaded guilty to both counts enumerated above, sentencing won’t come until the end of July, 2025. At his sentencing hearing, he could face fines of up to $250,000 for each of the two counts, as well as up to a 10-year prison sentence.
